Chance

"Papa, what's the good of harping on that," she remonstrated no louder.

"He is kind."

"And you went and . . . married him so that he should be kind to me. Is

that it? How did you know that I wanted anybody to be kind to me?"

"How strange you are!" she said thoughtfully.

"It's hard for a man who has gone through what I have gone through to

feel like other people. Has that occurred to you? . . . " He looked up

at last . . . "Mrs. Anthony, I can't bear the sight of the fellow." She

met his eyes without flinching and he added, "You want to go to him now."

His mild automatic manner seemed the effect of tremendous

self-restraint--and yet she remembered him always like that. She felt

cold all over.

"Why, of course, I must go to him," she said with a slight start.

He gnashed his teeth at her and she went out.

Anthony had not moved from the spot. One of his hands was resting on the

table. She went up to him, stopped, then deliberately moved still

closer. "Thank you, Roderick."

"You needn't thank me," he murmured. "It's I who . . . "

"No, perhaps I needn't. You do what you like. But you are doing it

well."

He sighed then hardly above a whisper because they were near the state-

room door, "Upset, eh?"

She made no sign, no sound of any kind. The thorough falseness of the

position weighed on them both. But he was the braver of the two. "I

dare say. At first. Did you think of telling him you were happy?"

"He never asked me," she smiled faintly at him. She was disappointed by

his quietness. "I did not say more than I was absolutely obliged to

say--of myself." She was beginning to be irritated with this man a

little. "I told him I had been very lucky," she said suddenly

despondent, missing Anthony's masterful manner, that something arbitrary

and tender which, after the first scare, she had accustomed herself to

look forward to with pleasurable apprehension. He was contemplating her

rather blankly. She had not taken off her outdoor things, hat, gloves.

She was like a caller. And she had a movement suggesting the end of a

not very satisfactory business call. "Perhaps it would be just as well

if we went ashore. Time yet."

He gave her a glimpse of his unconstrained self in the low vehement "You

dare!" which sprang to his lips and out of them with a most menacing

inflexion.